Jesus told us
that above all else we ought to seek first the kingdom of God: “But seek first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added
to you.” (Mt. 6:33) The purpose of these papers is to try and help Christians
to do just that - to seek first the kingdom of God. However, before one is in a
position to begin seeking a thing, one must know where to seek it.
Jesus taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” (Mt. 6:10) On the basis
of the Lord’s prayer it would seem clear that God’s kingdom is something that
we should be seeking here on the earth.
To many Christians this statement may run
counter to established habits of thinking. We may pray for God’s kingdom to be
established “on earth as it is in heaven,” but in practice we tend to think of
God’s kingdom as something that only relates to heaven. We have become so used
to thinking in terms of going to heaven when we die and of living there forever
and ever, that we have lost any positive vision for the earth. The earth is a
place that we tend to view as just a waiting room.
The effect of this misconception on popular
thinking has been to make the notion of God’s kingdom rather detached and
absent from our daily lives. It is hard for Christians to stir themselves up to
seek first the kingdom of God when they are not even seeking God’s kingdom in
the right place!
To make matters worse, popular theology has
taught us to believe that the earth is unimportant to the Lord. Hence, in some
circles the return of Christ has come to be entirely associated with the event
of Christians being taken away from the earth, rather than the time when
Christians will be given the power to help the Lord restore the earth. Some
have even gone so far as to suggest that when He returns, Christ will
completely destroy this world of His.
This paper attempts to turn the Christian
focus back to the earth, the very place we should be expecting, seeking and
hoping to see God’s kingdom arise. The following papers will build on this
foundation by suggesting what it means in practice to seek first Christ’s
kingdom.
A Worldwide Reviving
Many may think it ‘unspiritual’ to suggest
that the Christian hope should be oriented to the earth. However, a casual
glance through the Old Testament prophets reveal that the focus is entirely
earth-centred. God gave his prophets a wonderful vision for the earth - a
vision that, as Christians, we need to lay hold of by faith.
At the heart of the prophetic vision is the
promise of a worldwide revival throughout the earth. Jeremiah wrote about a
time when it would no longer be necessary to teach people about the Lord
because everyone would already know Him. "No more shall every man teach
his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from
the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord." (Jer. 31:34)
Similarly, the prophet Micah, when writing
about the coming of the Messiah, foretold a time when "...the Lord...shall be great to the ends of
the earth..." (Mic. 5:4)
This same
message runs throughout the prophetic literature of the Bible. For example,
Isaiah wrote about a time when the knowledge of God would cover the earth as
the waters cover the sea, (Is. 11:9) and every knee will bow before the Lord
(Is. 45:22-24).
If these
promises are to be taken seriously, then clearly the earth can be expected to
experience a great revival, one of such magnitude that even the word ‘revival’
may seem a little misplaced. What is really being described is the condition
that will exist when the Lord’s prayer is answered, that is, when God’s kingdom
is established on the earth as it is in heaven.
Also coupled
with this prophetic picture of the future comes a message of judgement. When
Jesus is reigning as King over the earth, no longer will people be able to
simply get on and do whatever they like, for God's judgements will be in full
force. The wicked will have the choice either to learn righteousness (Is. 26:9)
or be cut off from the earth (Ps. 101:8; Is. 41:11-12; Ez. 20:38). Furthermore,
God promises to rid the earth of all idols and objects of sinfulness. (Zech.
13:2; Micah 5:5-15)
Over the years
Christians have too frequently failed to grasp the reality of these promises
for the earth. Either they interpret them as applying to a condition that will
be realized in heaven, or in some way they make out that these promises have
already been fulfilled in Christ.
Regarding the
first of these suggestions, a look through the Old Testament prophecies will
establish at once that it is the earth that is the focus, not heaven.
"...the Lord...shall be
great to the ends of the earth..." (Mic.
5:4) "For the earth shall
be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea." (Is. 11:9) Furthermore, a recurring theme
throughout these promises is the mass evangelisation of those who do not know
God (Is. 11:10; 66:19; Mal. 1:11), for which scripture uses the term ‘Gentiles’
or ‘the nations.’ Clearly this is not something that can be realized in heaven
but on the earth where there is a population of unbelievers.
But what about
the other suggestion, namely that these promises have already been fulfilled
through Christ and His people? For example, when the prophecies speak of the
nations coming to God, might this be referring to what happened after Christ
when Gentiles began to accept the Word of God? While it is true that the
firstfruits of these promises started to be fulfilled at the time of Christ,
nothing even approaching the magnitude of these promises can be said to have
yet occurred. The nations do not yet “beat their swords into ploughshares, and
their spears into pruning hooks” (Is. 2:4) or whatever the modern equivalent of
that would be. The Lord has not yet established justice in the earth as Isaiah
foretold. When we read “He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has
established justice in the earth” (Is. 42:4; see also Is. 16:5) it is hardly
appropriate to suggest that the Lord will stop short of the full thing!
It is also true that the earth has not yet experienced the
kind of judgement on sin that scripture foretells. The government of peace that
is a central feature of the Messianic prophecies, and which is connected with
effective judgement on sin, has not even remotely come about (See Is. 2:4, 9:
2-7, 11:1-5, 42:3-4; Mic. 4:2-3).
When we read prophecies such as those I have been sharing, it all sounds very
exciting, and we naturally wish that God would hurry up and establish His kingdom on the earth. In the meantime, however, we get on
with our lives as normal and, though we might pray for God's kingdom to come, for the most part it has very little relevance
to the practicalities of our daily lives.
I believe such an attitude is a serious mistake. I am writing these
papers because I believe that the Biblical promises of the future have
immediate relevance in the present life of every Christian. One of the
reasons why I believe this will be seen when we look closer at an interesting
feature of the Biblical promises.
God promises to use His people to bring about the
worldwide revival that occurs at the onset of the kingdom. Isaiah 49 talks about a time when God's people
will be given as "a light to the Gentiles, that you should be My salvation
to the ends of the earth." (Is. 49: 6) God promises further to give His
people as a covenant to the people of the earth “To restore the earth” and to
release those who are in darkness. (Is. 49:8-9) Zechariah describes what it
will be like when God's people bring light to the rest of the nations:
“The
inhabitants of one city
shall go to another, saying
‘Let us
continue to go
and pray before the Lord,
And seek the Lord of hosts....’”
“Thus
says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from every
language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, ‘Let us
go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” (Zech. 8:21-23)
At this point I can imagine someone stopping me and saying something like
this: “These prophecies were addressed to the nations of Israel and Judah. It
says the nations will grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man. What does that have
to do with Christians today?”
This is an important question since most of the places where the Old
Testament talks about God's people, they are referred to by terms
such as Israel, Zion, Jacob, Jerusalem, etc.. For this reason, it is easy for
Christians to assume that these promises do not apply to us, but
have something to do with the Jews. I do not wish do deny
that the Lord will yet turn the nation of Israel to Himself, nor
that He may use the Jews to fulfil many of these prophecies. However, the New
Testament shows clearly
that the Biblical promises addressed to the nations of Israel and Judah also
apply to God's new ‘nation’ of people - i.e., those who profess Christ.
This came across
clearly in John the Baptist's ministry. John told the people to stop saying “We
have Abraham as our father” because “God is able to raise up children to
Abraham from these stones.” (Lk. 3:7-9) This is what essentially did
happen. As Jesus was later to say, reiterating the same message, “the kingdom
of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”
(Mt. 21:43) This
new nation to which Jesus referred is the community of the new covenant. God's
covenant with Abraham, which had been with those of his physical ancestry, is
fulfilled in the new covenant, which is with those who are Abraham's spiritual
ancestors (see Romans 4). As Paul put it in Romans 9:6, “For they are not all Israel
who are of Israel,” and earlier in Romans 2:28-29, he wrote
For he is not a
Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the
flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the
heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from
God. (See also Phil. 3:3; Heb. 11 & Rev. 3:9)
For
this reason, we have more than sufficient grounds for reading the Old Testament
prophecies as applying to Christians even when addressed to Israel or Judah.
All the wonderful prophecies in the later half of Isaiah, which describe God's
people taking the knowledge of Him to the ends of the earth, are relevant for
us today as Christians.
Isaiah writes
about a time when "the mountain of the Lord’s
house shall be established... and all nations shall flow to it" to learn
of God's ways and to receive the laws of God. (Is. 2:2-3) Micah paints a similar
picture, when "Many nations shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to
the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ (Micah 4:2-3)
In the coming kingdom, the
temple or house of the Lord is a prominent feature, and it is connected
strongly with the idea of enlightenment being brought to the nations. But what
does it mean? Does it mean that the Lord will build a literal house somewhere
that people can come to and learn? The answers to such questions become clear
when we consider a few passages from the New Testament. In 1 Peter 2:4-8, referring to Christ, Peter
says that “the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone.” (1 Pet. 2:7) This raises an important question: of what is Christ
the chief cornerstone? The answer is given by Paul in Ephesians 2:1922:
Now, therefore,
you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in
whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the
Lord, in whom you also are being built
together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (See also 1 Cor. 3:16;
6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Heb. 9)
Here we see that Christ
is the chief cornerstone of a holy temple, a temple that consists of the people
of God. Those who belong to Christ become stones in this temple. “Coming to Him
as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious,
you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ.” (2 Pet. 2:4-5)
With these thoughts in
mind, we are in a better position to understand the Old Testament prophecies
about the Lord's house being established. Earlier I quoted Isaiah and Micah
telling about a time when all nations would flow to God's house to learn of His
ways and to receive knowledge of His laws. (Is. 2:2-3; Mic. 4:2-3) The New
Testament writers saw these prophecies as showing that God’s people, the
corporate temple of God, would be instrumental in bringing the knowledge and
laws of God to the whole earth. Furthermore, they enlarged the prophetic vision by
showing that the resurrection of Jesus made it possible for those who have died
in faith to one day return to the earth in resurrection.
It is in light of the New Testament teaching
on God’s living temple that we are in a position to understand the spectacular
vision God gave Ezekiel (Ezekiel chapter 47). Ezekiel saw rivers of living
waters flowing out of God's temple for the healing of the earth. When God fills
His temple of living stones with His glory (Haggai 2:6-9; 2 Thess. 1:10), then
His people will become channels of His power, capable of the kinds of ministry
for which the miracles of the gospels were but a foretaste. When God gives His
people “As a covenant to the people, to restore the earth,” (Is. 49:8) then
truly “shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of
him; for that which has not been told them they shall see, and that which they
have not heard they shall understand.” (Is. 52: 15)
There is no point in studying what
the Bible says about the future unless it makes a practical difference in our lives
today. Thus, I have shared these prophecies, not as something to sit back and
wait for God to bring about, but as a wake up call to us as Christians.
The appropriate reaction to these promises is to respond like Daniel
after he calculated from Jeremiah's prophecies, when the exile would be
completed. (Daniel 9:2) After making these calculations, Daniel didn't just
stop and wait for it to happen, but gave himself over to prayer, fasting and
confessing the sins of his people.
Can God's people throughout the land of England - and, indeed, throughout
the whole earth - be stirred up to act as Daniels, confessing our own sin and
unfaithfulness? For God's people have, by and large, been unfaithful. As I
shall try to show in the next paper, God's people have left their first love to
become polluted by the spirit of this age. This should come as no small
surprise, for the powers of darkness have done everything they can to make
God's people impotent, hoping thereby to prevent the promised revival. How can
we take the ways of God to the whole world as long as our own lives are filled
with complacency, compromise and the preoccupation of self? How can we raise up
the standard of God’s laws to the nations as long as our own lives are a
mockery to those very standards? How long must God wait before His people are
ready to be showered with the kinds of glory and responsibilities that Isaiah
promises?
The church needs reviving before it can bring revival to the nations.
In the last paper we saw the important role that God’s
people play in Christ’s kingdom and the worldwide revival that is a central
feature of the establishment of that kingdom. It would be a mistake to respond
to these promises by thinking that because the Lord promises to use His people
as the instruments of worldwide revival, that we need to do nothing but sit
back and wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled. When the angel Gabriel
appeared to Mary and told her that she would be the instrument to bring the
promised Messiah into the world, she responded in obedience and participation.
Let us do similarly. The Lord is calling His people to be the instruments of
revival to the nations - let us, like Mary, respond in joyful participation,
eager to fit into any part that the Lord would have us to play.
The
first thing that needs to be done is obvious. As I said at the end of the last
paper, the
church needs to be revived before it is even in a position to offer anything to
the world. But not only do we need to be revived, we need to repent. Sadly, we
have neglected our responsibility to be a people through whom the ways and
character of God are shown. We have turned aside from our role as standard
bearers to a world lost in darkness. We have been so busy pointing the finger
at sin in the world that we have failed to notice the extent to which we have
been corrupted by the spirit of this age.
The spirit of this age is one that replaces God with self.
It implicitly denies the kingship of Christ by setting ourselves up as king.
This basic sin goes back to the very beginning when Eve
listened to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In the account of Adam and Eve’s
fall, it was when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6), that “she took
of its fruit and ate.” We see here that Eve’s mistake was to replace the
standard God had already established with a standard based on her own feelings.
Eve’s own definition of goodness (“the tree was good for food”), her own
perception (“it was pleasant to the eyes”) and her own emotional
desires (“a tree desirable to make one wise”) took precedent over the
external standard God had already established.
That was the beginning of Satan’s work in causing us to
view our world ‘egocentrically’ rather than ‘theocentrically’ – meaning simply
that the self and it’s feelings become the ultimate frame of reference. Now
although every sin amounts to putting ourselves in the place of God, it is fair
to say that in our particular age egocentricity is unprecedented.
In the past
people tended to unconsciously submit their thinking to outside parameters -
good, bad or indifferent as those parameters might have been – whether it be
the expectations of society, tradition, divine revelation, the church, natural
reason, and so on. What is different about our age is the extent to which,
instead of submitting ourselves to outside standards, our thinking is highly
governed by our own emotions and impressions. Without even realizing it, people
of today tend to view the world and interpret their experiences through the
lens of their own feelings.
A consequence of
this ‘egocentricity’, is that we live in a universe without any outside point
of reference. We have no way to get our bearings in this world, no framework
that can offer meaning and wholeness to all of life’s separate experiences. Though contemporary man has many feelings,
ideas and beliefs, there is no foundation outside the self with which he can
test his feelings and beliefs. With no yardstick of right and wrong with which
to measure his behaviour or thinking, contemporary man can only lapse into the
vacuous dictum of ‘being true to oneself.’
There has never
been a time when it was as necessary to proclaim the standard of God’s Word and
Christ’s Kingship. The problem is that we as Christians have also become
polluted by this same spirit of egocentricity. Even among evangelicals who hold
to the Bible as an authority, God’s revelation does not function as the
standard to which everything else is constantly referred. While acknowledging
the Bible as the authority for all thinking and behaviour, we have still failed
to integrate this standard into all aspects of our lives and thinking. Our
minds remain a mixture of disconnected bits of Biblical truth with the
instincts and impressions of this age.
The message of
the kingdom of God directly challenges the egocentric spirit of our age. It is
a message that we are not accountable to ourselves but to a King who demands
total allegiance – a king who is about to return and demand an account. As
Christians we should be a living testimony to this fact, yet we have put
ourselves in the place of God. We have sought our own feelings where we should
have sought God’s Word; we have sought to be ‘true to ourselves’ where we
should have been obedient to the King. Rather than offering an alternative to
the spirit of this age, we have let our minds be cheated “according to the
basic principles of the world…” (Col. 2:8) In using God to meet our own
egocentric needs, we have been left with no weapon against the spirit of this
age.
When each one of us forms our own mini-kingdom, where one’s
self rather than Christ can sit on the throne, then Christianity is reduced to
a private individualistic affair. The kind of ‘Christianity’ that ensues is one
where each of us can write our own rules and follow our own path. Truth becomes
privatised.
In his book Losing Our Virtue, David Wells has
described this kind of individualism as being “a deep sense of entitlement
to being left alone, to live in a way that is emancipated from the demands and
expectations of others, to being able to fashion its own life in the way it
wants to, to being able to develop its own values and beliefs in its own way,
to resist all authority. To be free in these ways, many have come to think, is
indispensable to being a true individual.”[i][i]
The effect of
this individualistic thinking has been to alter the whole landscape of how
people view their faith. Even the word ‘faith’ has come to denote something
highly subjective. Christianity has gradually become privatised, so that the
sphere of faith is seen as something that applies only to the individual’s
personal walk. The consequence is that no one has any right to tell another
person what they should or should not believe, nor can the Bible be used to
create expectations, demands or pressures for others. Such is the nature of
post-modern spirituality and, sadly, such are the assumptions that we in the
church have imbibed.
The church of
today wants to have its cake and eat it, desiring the benefits spirituality can
offer the self while avoiding the accountability of self. We want a God that
can satisfy inner needs but not a God that demands change. We want the support
that fellowship can offer without the challenge. We want the church to support
us in pursuing our walks of faith autonomously without the mutual accountability
that was the hallmark of New Testament Christianity. We are quite willing to
show love to others as long as our own lifestyle is not upset. We are highly
tolerant of all differences except those that confront the self - a self that
asks nothing from others except that it be left alone to walk its own path, in
its own way…in its own time.
In short, the
kingdom of God has been replaced by the kingdom of the self.
The Way of the Cross
In sharp contrast to the self-oriented landscape of
contemporary spirituality stands the way of the cross. “If
anyone desires to come after Me,” Jesus said, “let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow Me.” (Mt. 16:24) The way of the cross is the way of
death – death to everything that stands between us and the Lord.
As Christians we
have become so preoccupied with trying to make the gospel attractive and
‘relevant’ to our post-modern age, that the message of the cross has been left
behind. It is time to turn back to the cross, which first confronts sin and death before it
brings forgiveness and life.
The cross should be
offensive to the world, not a kind of pill that is supposed to offer interior
meaning, purpose and happiness to a person’s life. Such is not the gospel at
all. It is time to turn away from the kind of evangelism that seeks to make
Christianity attractive to the self by being like the world. The compelling
power of the gospel is the good news that there is more to live for than
just ourselves and our own fulfilment.
The gospel of the kingdom
challenges us to abandon this preoccupation with the self, for it shows us
something outside ourselves that is so wonderful it is worth living and dying
for. It is the good news of something radically better than anything man can
offer. If we as Christians do not have a sure and solid hope that sees outside
ourselves, then we have nothing more to offer than any other therapy or
self-help program on the market. After all, people can make for themselves just
as successful and spiritually fulfilling lives without Christianity. If all
that Christianity can offer is another way for the self to find fulfilment,
then Christianity is just one brand among thousands, all hawking the same
essential product.
We have been so keen to get
people saved into God’s kingdom that we have forgotten the King of that
kingdom; we have forgotten the standards that govern that kingdom; we have
forgotten what it means to reflect that kingdom in our lives. The result, I
fear, is that many people are being introduced to a Christianity that bypasses
the unique and uncompromising foundation of the cross and of sin. In our
eagerness to remove the offensiveness of the cross and make the gospel
attractive, we have led people astray. We have enabled people to go over the
hedge instead of through the small wicket gate, to use Bunyan’s analogy. All
such people will have to begin again, for there is only one legitimate way in,
and that is by the foot of the cross.
Let us repent of our
compromise and turn back to God. In recognizing that the only hope for the
world is the kingdom of God, let us be unashamed to proclaim what it means to
be a citizen of that kingdom now. The gospel of the kingdom brings joy, hope
and a wonderful expectation for the future, but it also brings a challenge: to
live in this kingdom we must be aware of the standards by which it is governed.
Only by submitting to these standards can we expect to enjoy the benefits of
the kingdom. When the kingdom comes in its fullness, may it not overtake us as
a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5:4), but may it be the fulfilment of what has
already been growing within us.
Part 3:
A Light to the Gentiles
Fitting in or Set
Apart?
In Deuteronomy 28:9-10, Moses spoke about God's intention
to establish
a people holy to
himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your
God, and walk in his ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you
are called by the name of the LORD…
These words are as
applicable to us today as they were for the Israelites in the wilderness. By
walking under the Kingship of Christ, our interactions, opinions, relationships
and entire lives should reflect to all the peoples of the earth that we are a
holy people. (By 'holy' I mean the true definition of holiness, which is not
supercilious spirituality, but 'set apart.') In other words, we should stand
out in the world as different, as being a "peculiar people." (1 Pet.
2:9)
What has
happened instead is that we have become conformed to the pattern of this age.
We view our lives and the future through the lens of secular progress. Within
the confines of a false framework, we can pride ourselves on how much we are
growing and handling life's problems successfully. Yet we are building on a
foundation of sand because we have departed from the Biblical absolutes. We
have nothing to offer the world because we have no definition of compassion,
understanding and love that runs counter to secular concepts. We simply add the
name of God to what hundreds of secular psychologists have offered people for
years, legitimising our preoccupation with self-comfort by subsuming it into a
quasi-Christian framework. When the difference between us and the world is
acknowledged at all, it is often reduced to the truncated duality of the saved
vs. the unsaved.
We have ceased
to be set apart because we have ceased to embrace the Biblical definition of
man and the Biblical perceptive on life. We have ceased to be confident in the
truth because we have placed our confidence in the notions, definitions and
ideas of man.
The only reason
that the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and Paul could speak as they did was
because their confidence was placed in God and His Word. They had a confidence
so strong that they could hold onto the truth even in the face of circumstances
that seemed to undermine their hope. These men knew that the truth would win
out in the end, and this gave them courage to proclaim God's Word, regardless
of the reaction. Their hearts burned with a love that was not satisfied in patching
up a crumbling wall but instead sought to expose the true state of the wall.
They were hated because they tore away the façade.
These men of the
Bible were neither ignorant nor afraid. We are both. We are ignorant because we
have departed from Biblical knowledge. The spirit of this age has encompassed
us like a tidal wave, and we have lost our bearings. We are afraid, because we
fear the reactions of man. In our attempt to be acceptable in the world's eyes,
our witness has become impotent.
Echoing Moses'
words in Deuteronomy 28, Jesus said,
You are the light of the world. A city that is set
on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket,
but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your
Father in heaven. (Mt. 5:16)
If we are properly
functioning as light in the world, then we can expect certain things as a
consequence. Because light exposes what the darkness conceals, those in
darkness hate light lest their deeds be exposed. Therefore, we should expect to
receive reactions of hatred, derision and belittlement. When this happens, it
does not mean that the light is bad but that it is doing its work. Did not
Jesus say that we would be hated for His namesake? (Mark 13:13; Luke 21:17; Mt.
10:22) If we are not getting such a reaction, one must wonder if we are
functioning as light at all.
We rate our
success by how little we disturb ourselves and others, thinking that this
reveals our compassion, understanding and love. But the Bible's definition of
love and compassion is not the world's definition, not even the definition of
the religious or 'spiritual.' We are privileged to have an understanding that
is unique, living and true, but we have squandered it because we have become
afraid of the reaction.
No one minds
someone being healed, just as no one today minds a Christian working to make
the world a better place. It is when we love our neighbour enough to tell him
that without Jesus there is no salvation - that is when people begin to hate
us. Oswald Chambers pointed out that men have vested interests which such
things as kindness and philanthropy do not touch, but which the Spirit of
Jesus, testified to by human lips does touch, awakening either indignation or
repentance. Therefore, in everything we do it is essential to do it confessing
Christ's Kingship. Even when this causes a negative reaction it is essentially
positive, for it shows that consciences are being touched - it shows that we
are being light.
The New
Testament teaches that the ministry of Jesus has been offered to those who
believe in Him as a foretaste of what it will be like in the kingdom. Put another
way, the church is a sort of 'cameo' that is meant to demonstrate to the world
the truth of God's kingdom. That is why
all the injunctions Paul laid down governing relationships in the church should
not be viewed merely as helpful advice for getting on better with each other.
On the contrary, the New Testament teaching on church relationships is so that
we can live today by the principles of God's future kingdom. Thus, the stress
the New Testament puts on there being such things as love, mutual accountability
and a bearing of each other's burdens in the church, as well as the mandates
for church discipline, have an eschatological importance. By following these
guidelines within the church, the firstfruits become holy to the Lord (Rom.
11:16). Spiritually, this opens up the way for the final harvest in which all
the world will live by these same standards. Therefore, to turn aside from our
responsibilities to our brethren in the church is to turn aside from our
responsibilities to a world lost in darkness.
It was this same
message that had to be brought to the church at Ephesus in John's Revelation.
(Rev. 2:1-7) Here were a people who were apparently faithful in works, labour
and perseverance, a people who hated those who were evil. Yet we are told, they
had departed from their first love. "Remember therefore from where you
have fallen," wrote the angel, "repent and do the first works, or
else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place…"
(Rev. 2:5) What are the 'first works'? The answer is given in Jesus' teaching.
Though Jesus emphasized the importance of one's relationship with God, as
encapsulated in the greatest commandment (Mt. 22:36-38), He taught that it is through
our relationships with our fellow man that we demonstrate and outwork our love
for God. (Mt. 25:40; Mk. 9:41) Hence, nearly all of Christ's moral teaching is
concerned with relations among people. These are the 'first works' because it
is in this domain that we prepare ourselves for the coming kingdom. Thus, when
the apostle John came to summarize the Christian life in his first letter, the
message is simultaneously the most simple and the most difficult thing he could
have said: love one another as Jesus loved. Only by allowing the love of Jesus
to flow through us can God's kingdom begin to grow and develop in our own
hearts.
It is crucial
that we remember, as I said earlier, that Jesus' love is different from the
world's definition of love. The love of Jesus is a love that not only raised a
little girl from the dead, but overturned the tables of idolatry that had
infiltrated the church; it is a love that not only healed a paralytic, but
stood up on a mountain top and spoke against the hypocrisy of God's people;
above all, it is a love that is willing to endure any amount of discomfort and
agony in order to reach those who are lost.
Let us follow in
Jesus' footsteps, and stop thinking that salvation should be comfortable. Life
is not a parley but a battle. This world is a war between the kingdom of
darkness and the kingdom of light. Let us not turn from this fight until
"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of
His Christ…" (Rev. 11:15) Let us stir ourselves up, not only to seek the
kingdom of God in the world at large, but to seek its establishment amongst
ourselves. Let us repent of our egocentricity, individualism and conformity,
and ask the Lord to revive our communities. Let us send a message to the world
that Christ is king.
To
receive these papers as a booklet, please write to
Robin & Esther Phillips,
Oxleigh, Langham Road,
Mumby, Alford
Lincs, LN13 9SQ
Phone: 01754-872539
Email largerhope@tiscali.co.uk
Or
Dennis & Jenny Smith,
11, Bilsby Road, Alford,
Lincs, LN13 9EW
Phone:- 01507 – 463789
If any person, group, fellowship, or church would like me
to come and talk over these important issues, I shall be pleased to do so. I
cannot say “distance no object”, but arrangements can often be made, God
willing. In any event, I am always ready to chat on the phone.
Robin Phillips.
[i] David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the church must recover its moral vision (Inter-varsity Press, 1998), p. 67.